Project by William Bottoms III (2018)
Budgetary and staffing constraints in historical house museums often result in disorganized or non-existent curatorial documentation, and ultimately, interpretive stagnation. The purpose of this project was to facilitate the interpretation of collections within historical house museums by bridging the gap between object and story, invigorating the interpretive process. To achieve this purpose, two objectives were pursued. The first objective oversaw the creation of a comprehensive curatorial document titled, 鈥淭he Native American Artifact Collection at the Hiwan Museum: Post 1979,鈥� which identified the source communities of the Hiwan Museum鈥檚 eighty-seven Native American artifacts and interpreted them in accordance to curatorial best practices. The second objective aimed to produce a distributive interpretive tool template for historical house museums to assert curatorial voice over their collections and organize their institutional narratives. The project progressed in three phases. The first phase gathered information from the Hiwan Museum鈥檚 accession records and took photographs of the artifacts. The second phased identified and interpreted the artifacts. The third phase concentrated on the fabrication of an interpretive instrument based on the lessons learned in the first two phases. The results of the project encapsulated major findings within the Hiwan Museum鈥檚 collection establishing a foundation for continued curatorial research. The interpretive tool template demonstrated its potential as a standard-bearer for curatorial best practices in educating communities about their heritage through narrative structures.
碍别测飞辞谤诲蝉:听Class of 2018, curation, interpretation, objects, house museums, house museum, museum, museum studies, museology
颁颈迟补迟颈辞苍:听
Bottoms III, W. (2018). . Unpublished master鈥檚 project, 痳豆在线, Seattle, Washington.